News

100 Years Of One Family's History Donated To Museum

Thursday August 11 2011

AN assortment of treasures documenting a family's history over 100 years has been donated to Barnsley's new museum project Experience Barnsley.

Former Barnsley resident Marion Carr has donated a host of memorabilia about her family. Her great-grandmother Sarah Burnett was a shopkeeper at 19 Grace Street in the early 1900s. The shop sold anything you would need from the front room of the house. Special items given to the museum include the brass weighing scales used in the shop, old tins for storing sweets and photographs of the shop front showing the 4' 3'' Sarah standing formidably on the door step.

Marion’s grandfather, George Burnett served with the Barnsley Pals. He was lost for four days on the Somme and suffered greatly from shell shock. He returned to Barnsley after the war, bringing with him bullets, buttons and badges from his uniform along with a rare British Army issue biscuit that was given to all front line troops.

More recent items from the family’s past include a 1960s set of perm curlers in their original plastic tub, an icing set with its original box given to Marion’s mother, Amy Burnett- Carr, as a wedding present in 1944 and copies of Woman’s Weekly magazine from the 1970s which were bought by her mother for the patterns to knit baby clothes.

A spokesman said: "Marion's items, along with many others donated by people from Barnsley, will be on display when the museum opens next year."

Experience Barnsley will be the first ever museum and archives centre devoted to Barnsley’s history and much more and will open across the ground floor of the Town Hall in July 2012 supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Photo caption: Amy Burnett- Carr at work in Barnsley town hall in the early 1940s.